Twitter's Still Struggling To Become More Than A Niche Network

Despite extraordinary visibility, capital, and hype, Twitter continues to struggle to move beyond the status of a niche social network.

A recent chart from Morgan Stanley, tweeted by Business Insider's Elena Holodny, shows that Twitter's share over overall Internet usage time remains tiny. And time spent on the service actually grew more slowly than the overall Internet last year.

Importantly, this chart only appears to show time spent on Twitter.com, and most of Twitter's usage comes via apps, so this chart presents only a partial picture. But the big blue band at the bottom, which shows the same measure for Facebook, illustrates the vast difference in the amount of attention commanded by the two networks. Twitter is the little black band at the top.

Facebook-owned Instagram recently passed Twitter in usage. And Instagram, Facebook-owned WhatsApp, and other networks and apps have captured markets and mindshare that arguably could have been Twitter's.

These struggles are one reason some Twitter investors are losing patience with the company's CEO.

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